The NYS Budget & a Letter from Jeremy Johannesen

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This year’s NYS Budget process is now complete.
The budget reflects the difficult fiscal situations at both the state and federal levels. Despite a complex political atmosphere and several setbacks along the way, your sustained and effective advocacy efforts secured the following hard-won victories:State Library Aid
This year’s enacted budget contains the first system aid increase since 2016. As you know, Governor Cuomo proposed a $4M cut in Library Aid in this year’s Executive Budget. The FY2018-19 enacted budget reversed this proposed cut, and allocated anadditional $1M – total State Library Aid will be $96.6M.State Public Library Construction Aid
Despite repeated attempts by the Governor to cut funding for this program, we have successfully fought for increase funding. This year, the Governor proposed a $10M CUT in capital funding – from $24M back to $14M. This would have erased two years of hard-won gains. The FY2018-19 enacted budget includes $34M in public library construction aid. This is $10M more than we received last year, $20M more than was proposed in the Executive Budget.

Each year, the legislature makes tough decisions to allocate funding among hundreds of worthy programs; funding library services means the calls of other advocates went unheeded, and funding needs for other programs went unmet. Our advocates and partners in the state legislature deserve our appreciation and gratitude for their months of efforts on our behalf.

As one of New York’s core library activists, NOW is the time for YOU to ACT on this integral part of the budget advocacy cycle – thanking our partners in the legislature for fighting on behalf of the library community.

NYLA makes it easy for you to thank your local legislators – In less than 15 seconds, you can send a message of appreciation with our pre-loaded thank you letter, or edit the letter to send your own personal message of thanks.
Click HERE to send your message of thanks!

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